Baby, It's Cold Outside

No, this isn't a blog post about the controversy over the song, it really is cold outside! 
New record lows are being set as well as record lows for the high temperature of the day. Previous records for this date were set in 1965. Doug was two years old and we were living in the old parsonage in Brooks. I don't remember any specifics about the cold weather then, but I do remember how drafty and hard to heat that place was.

Thanks to the snaps, pops, bangs, noises the house was making from the contractions of the cold and expansions when the furnace ran, I've been awake since 4:00 a.m. When I got up at five, the temperature was -22° according to my online home page. Our high today is supposed to be -8° with wind chills in the -25° to -35° range. Baby, it's cold outside. And I'm so glad I don't have to go anywhere, that our furnace is working, that our pipes didn't freeze.

It has me wondering how we survived the cold when I was young. Our old farm house wasn't insulated. It was heated by a coal stove in the living room and a wood burning range in the kitchen. Which I don't remember, though I do remember, when I was older, the wood/coal burning stove that was brought into the kitchen each fall to help heat the house after an oil-burner stove replaced the coal stove in the living room.

And I wonder where Betty and I slept until we were ages three and five? It wasn't until 1948 that there were two useable bedrooms upstairs. Until then the west room didn't have a floor. Only the smaller east bedroom was used and my older brother had that. Did we girls sleep downstairs? Where? Did I sleep upstairs in the same room as Ron and Betty was downstairs in a crib in Mom and Dad's bedroom? My memories don't stretch back that far and a call to Ron to see if he remembered didn't help. He did say the upstairs didn't even have floor registers until 1948. The only heat was what came up the stairwell.

My memories of sleeping upstairs include feather beds and piles of blankets; getting up and standing on the register for what warmth there was while getting dressed. Oh, yeah, and there was no indoor bathroom. Going to the outhouse meant bundling up to hurry down the path only to partially undress and freeze until you hurried back to the house.

I don't remember school being called off because of the cold. I do remember trudging through the snow in layers of clothing and scarves around our necks and faces to walk the mile to our one-room school - and being envious of the kids whose parents brought them in the family sedans.

How did we survive? I guess we were a lot tougher then.